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Have I been misinformed?

AuthorMessage
Explorer
Sep 22, 2013
86
Hello!
Today while playing W101, I had seen a few players mentioning that the "Fizzle rate has increased". They said Professor Greyrose mentioned it in "Halston's Laboratory", but I can't seem to find this mentioned article. I would just like to clarify that this information is false, and surely you wouldn't increase fizzle rates (would really prefer a response from a professor). Thanks,

Lenora SkullShade87

Administrator
Hello,

I'm not sure what they would be referring to. There hasn't been a change with relation to that.


community@wizard101.com
Astrologist
Dec 26, 2013
1124
Lenora SkullShade on Jun 30, 2015 wrote:
Hello!
Today while playing W101, I had seen a few players mentioning that the "Fizzle rate has increased". They said Professor Greyrose mentioned it in "Halston's Laboratory", but I can't seem to find this mentioned article. I would just like to clarify that this information is false, and surely you wouldn't increase fizzle rates (would really prefer a response from a professor). Thanks,

Lenora SkullShade87
I'm not a professor but I believe I can speak to this with some degree of certainty...
Fizzle rate is directly proportionate to the urgency of the situation. When it is absolutely imperative that you cast a successful spell because your very life depends on it... that's when you will fizzle the most. Oh wait, that's Murphy's Law. Well, let's just say that's the way it SEEMS to work. Or not.

Mastermind
Mar 13, 2010
328
TucsonWizard on Jul 1, 2015 wrote:
I'm not a professor but I believe I can speak to this with some degree of certainty...
Fizzle rate is directly proportionate to the urgency of the situation. When it is absolutely imperative that you cast a successful spell because your very life depends on it... that's when you will fizzle the most. Oh wait, that's Murphy's Law. Well, let's just say that's the way it SEEMS to work. Or not.
Ha!

All of my Exalted Wizards (Life, Death, Fire) have over 100% Accuracy. They can't fizzle unless Smoked/Mantled. So, of course every.single.time they are Smoked/Mantled, they fizz. It's even a joke with the Storm I often quest with. Shane smokes us, I fizzle and he powers through. Storm success, Life fail.

Survivor
Jan 25, 2013
27
I have on my wizard for 100% accuracy for every school, so mine never fizzles, so what those people may be saying that the fizzle rate has changed, I don't think is true because mine never fizzles.

Hope this helped- Alexis Soul Song

Survivor
Jan 10, 2014
44
You are ALL incorrect

I am a Professional Computer Programmer and the answer is simple It is Summer Time. All the children are out of school. Wiz101 is basically based on a Random Number Generator. Unfortunately there is no such thing (ask a Math Teacher) So with so many people play all of the "good" number are used up and all the "bad" numbers are left.

Look at the upper left of any spell card. It gives the percent chance that a spell will work. !00% spells should never Fizzle. While a 70% spell will most always Fizzle.

So, stick to the spells with a higher percent chance to cast. Life seems to be the best. Play at odd hours. Very early in the Morning and Late at night are good.

Hope this helps. Smile, September is coming

Astrologist
Dec 26, 2013
1124
NewbieButLearning on Jul 1, 2015 wrote:
You are ALL incorrect

I am a Professional Computer Programmer and the answer is simple It is Summer Time. All the children are out of school. Wiz101 is basically based on a Random Number Generator. Unfortunately there is no such thing (ask a Math Teacher) So with so many people play all of the "good" number are used up and all the "bad" numbers are left.

Look at the upper left of any spell card. It gives the percent chance that a spell will work. !00% spells should never Fizzle. While a 70% spell will most always Fizzle.

So, stick to the spells with a higher percent chance to cast. Life seems to be the best. Play at odd hours. Very early in the Morning and Late at night are good.

Hope this helps. Smile, September is coming
You had me worried for a short while there because what you said almost started to make sense. I'm hoping this was meant to be sarcasm because then it does make sense but if you're being serious, with all due respect, WHAT? All the good numbers are used up!? That's the funniest thing I've heard in a long time! The thing with random generation is that everything resets every time. There's no such thing as using up all the "good numbers" because ALL the numbers are available ALL the time. It's the percentage that determines whether you get them or not. And to say that a spell with 70% accuracy will most always fizzle is just not logical. Oh it can fail, but logically speaking it should fail on average only 3 out of 10 times. It doesn't necessarily mean that's what will happen.. that's why it's called "chance"... but over the long run it should work out that way.
Got to run now... it's nearing noon so everyone will be eating lunch and my chances will be better to get one of those "good" numbers... just kidding!

Explorer
Sep 22, 2013
86
Hello everyone, just a reply.
I now know that the fizzle rates have not changed. But to make this very clear, my question was just relating to the chance of a fizzle put on the card of a spell (I never look at the fizzle/cast rate on my spell cards, so I had no idea if the rate had actually decreased in terms of cast rates). People had mentioned that the rate had gone down (making it easier to fizzle). My question was not relating to added accuracy or anything of that matter. Sorry for any conflict or confusion.

Lenora SkullShade90

Hero
Aug 18, 2011
776
NewbieButLearning on Jul 1, 2015 wrote:
You are ALL incorrect

I am a Professional Computer Programmer and the answer is simple It is Summer Time. All the children are out of school. Wiz101 is basically based on a Random Number Generator. Unfortunately there is no such thing (ask a Math Teacher) So with so many people play all of the "good" number are used up and all the "bad" numbers are left.

Look at the upper left of any spell card. It gives the percent chance that a spell will work. !00% spells should never Fizzle. While a 70% spell will most always Fizzle.

So, stick to the spells with a higher percent chance to cast. Life seems to be the best. Play at odd hours. Very early in the Morning and Late at night are good.

Hope this helps. Smile, September is coming
Gosh I hope that was kidding. Just in case anyone missed the joke, the time of day does not affect your fizzle rate, or drops, or anything. Each spell cast in the game is what we call an independent random event, in other words it isn't affected by things that happened before. There are set odds, and you are taking a random chance each time, like rolling dice.

So if your spell has a 70% accuracy, you can expect 70 of 100 tries to cast, and 30 of 100 tries to fizzle. It won't be exactly that number of fizzles every time, but over many tries it will average out to that. 70 is more than 30, so even a low accuracy school like Storm won't "most always" fizzle, but it will fizzle more than Life (only 10 fizzles per hundred casts). You can boost your accuracy with gear. Look for the 'target' stats.

Best of luck!

Survivor
Jan 10, 2014
44
I'm NOT surprised you are skeptical. Logic has nothing to do with it. A Random Number Generator does NOT start over each time. It just goes on and on.

To be totally honest, I do NOT care if you believe me. I was only trying to help. Do as you will and Fizzle.

Either way Good Luck and have fun


Geographer
Sep 07, 2011
823
Lenora SkullShade on Jul 2, 2015 wrote:
Hello everyone, just a reply.
I now know that the fizzle rates have not changed. But to make this very clear, my question was just relating to the chance of a fizzle put on the card of a spell (I never look at the fizzle/cast rate on my spell cards, so I had no idea if the rate had actually decreased in terms of cast rates). People had mentioned that the rate had gone down (making it easier to fizzle). My question was not relating to added accuracy or anything of that matter. Sorry for any conflict or confusion.

Lenora SkullShade90
Fizzle rates haven't been changed, and don't vary by day or number of users.

Mastermind
Jan 05, 2014
300
This gets argued about so much I really wish Kingsisle would just come clean and explain how fizzle really works.

There is a large school of thought that fizzling is simple, the percentage accuracy tells you your chance of not fizzling on every cast.

This school appears to be wrong. There have been several statistical studies with over a thousand trials, and it seems clear to anyone who has studied the subject that fizzle chance is NOT strictly based on the flat percentage. Note that KingsIsle has never said it is.

Do I know how fizzle works? No I do not. No one but Kingsisle employees with access to the actual fizzle algorithm know how it works.

But I can give an educated guess based on a great deal of experience. This is what I think happens. Every time a spell is cast in a duel, it either succeeds or fizzles. If it fizzles, this reduces the chance of the next spell fizzling. Kingsisle has actually said this occurs. What is less clear is what happens if the spell succeeds. It is my hypothesis that every time a spell succeeds, the chance of the next spell fizzling is increased. There is a running modifier to fizzle chance that goes up and down as each spell you cast either succeeds or fizzles.

The modifier does not seem to be able to cause a spell with 100% accuracy to fizzle. But any spell with less than 100% accuracy has a greatly increased chance of fizzling if it follows a long string of successful casts.

Think how you fight your duels. You open with a blade or two, maybe a trap or a shield. These zero pip spells all succeed because they have 100% accuracy. But the first time you cast an attack, the fizzle monster bites. That first attack spell consistently seems to have a lower chance to succeed than the accuracy displayed on the card would seem to indicate. I think its because those leadoff spells all succeeded and caused your running fizzle modifier to increase. It's not imagination, its a real effect.

Explorer
Sep 22, 2013
86
Gemma Luna on Jul 4, 2015 wrote:
Fizzle rates haven't been changed, and don't vary by day or number of users.
I know. I'm sorry, just the amount of replies and arguing on my post is really getting to me. It was just a question everyone! Now that the professor answered me there's no need to keep posting. And just so everyone knows, I know that fizzle rates don't go by number of users or the date (that whole response was fishy), so please, no need to keep telling me that it isn't true. If you can tell, I can tell. Also, please do not respond to my post with things like "well, I have 100% accuracy and never fizzle". This has absolutely nothing to do with my question! Ty,

Lenora SkullShade91

Explorer
Jun 27, 2015
50
DanTheTerrible on Jul 4, 2015 wrote:
This gets argued about so much I really wish Kingsisle would just come clean and explain how fizzle really works.

There is a large school of thought that fizzling is simple, the percentage accuracy tells you your chance of not fizzling on every cast.

This school appears to be wrong. There have been several statistical studies with over a thousand trials, and it seems clear to anyone who has studied the subject that fizzle chance is NOT strictly based on the flat percentage. Note that KingsIsle has never said it is.

Do I know how fizzle works? No I do not. No one but Kingsisle employees with access to the actual fizzle algorithm know how it works.

But I can give an educated guess based on a great deal of experience. This is what I think happens. Every time a spell is cast in a duel, it either succeeds or fizzles. If it fizzles, this reduces the chance of the next spell fizzling. Kingsisle has actually said this occurs. What is less clear is what happens if the spell succeeds. It is my hypothesis that every time a spell succeeds, the chance of the next spell fizzling is increased. There is a running modifier to fizzle chance that goes up and down as each spell you cast either succeeds or fizzles.

The modifier does not seem to be able to cause a spell with 100% accuracy to fizzle. But any spell with less than 100% accuracy has a greatly increased chance of fizzling if it follows a long string of successful casts.

Think how you fight your duels. You open with a blade or two, maybe a trap or a shield. These zero pip spells all succeed because they have 100% accuracy. But the first time you cast an attack, the fizzle monster bites. That first attack spell consistently seems to have a lower chance to succeed than the accuracy displayed on the card would seem to indicate. I think its because those leadoff spells all succeeded and caused your running fizzle modifier to increase. It's not imagination, its a real effect.
That sounds like a very good explanation on the ratio of fizzles but Kingsisle placed those percentages on average and as he mentioned above, I believe also the more times you succeed with a spell, the more of a chance a spell has fizzling. Here, let me give you a example.

If I'm in school Fire and I cast a shield, a blade, and a trap, they all got 100% accuracy, right? Now, if I use a Meteor Strike which is a 75% chance of happening ON AVERAGE that means that if I casted it multiple times over 100 times, I should get a 75/100 chance of casting it and a 25/100 chance of fizzling. Though as you see, as I casted more and more 100% cards (3 in a row), my accuracy decreases and with the accuracies based on increments of 5% more or less on various schools. What I believe is with each card casted successfuly, the chance of you fizzling grows 5% bigger meaning my actual fizzle chance is now 65% instead of 75% if I didn't cast anything but that spell first.

Now, moving on, I see that number 75% as a base number, where you add or subtract increments of 5% depending on if you cast successfuly (-5%) or fizzle (+5%) so in the middle, 75% is a average again proving the studies of what other people have done on this so, when I cast, I actually cast with 65% but you see, IT FIZZLES! Now, that the accuracy has raised based on me fizzling, I see Meteor Strike again now only with a 70% chance. I cast it and it works but that means my next card is now back at 65% chance so ... in the end, when you're stacking with blades and traps, prepare for your accuracy to take a big dip unless you got over 100% accuracy in that school. This is just a theory though, a Wizard101 theory. Thanks for reading!

P.S - If you got any questions, please quote this with your question and I will be sure to answer them.

Squire
Jan 21, 2010
571
I rather think that each successful cast merely resets your fizzle chances, and does not actually increase your chance to fizzle..

70% success is actually quite harsh. By itself a 70% rate would actually cause some spells to fizzle every single time they are cast during a play session, or cause them to never fizzle during that time... You certainly don't need an automatic game mechanic dedicated to making spells fizzle more often. However, if you want people to have fun playing the game, you do need to soften a 30% failure rate. Throwing in a guaranteed success is a good way to do this. Making the guaranteed success not quite predictable keeps things interesting. It may take two attempts, or three, but one of your 70% attacks will connect. (provided you keep spamming 70% attack spells and nothing else)

If I were to implement this I would use the mechanics that are already in the game. I would grant accuracy buffs much like stun wards are granted after a player becomes stunned. Each time you fizzle you get an accuracy charm. Like stun wards we want the accuracy charms to persist until they are triggered. We can make them stack by granting a higher value accuracy charm each time a fizzle occurs, or we can make them a flat value, but allow them to stack with all accuracy charms. Now we make players unable to see them... for some reason...
To be fair our wizards to tend to collect a confusing amount of orbiting junk during battle. These accuracy charms or fizzle wards are automatic triggered events, so it could be argued that there is no reason for players to see them. I could say the same about the stun wards, except that keeping track of stun immunity is rather important when you are fighting three critters that each decide to cast a stun spell on you, randomly throughout a battle.